Abstract

In Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, former marine and Yale Law School graduate J.D. Vance offers a personal account of growing up in – and eventually leaving – an impoverished white working-class ‘hillbilly’ community experiencing social and economic crisis. While the book has been praised for offering insights into why Donald Trump proved so attractive to the US white working class in the 2016 Presidential election, Peter Carrol is less convinced by Vance’s broader and overtly politicised sociological analysis of his community. Nonetheless, he finds the vividness of Vance’s unflinching recollections compelling.